Dallas had just taken the lead in a back-and-forth affair at 24-17 on Dwayne Harris' 78-yard saunter into the Birds' end zone with a Mat McBriar punt with 13:35 to play.

Now was the time for the Eagles to answer and pull out a must-win game in the fiery crucible of an intense NFL fourth quarter. Now was a when a good team would drive the field, fire up its desperate home crowd, and make the Cowboys answer in the maelstrom of noise a charged-up Lincoln Financial Field.

But since the Eagles are a King Dunlap-sized distance from being anything like a good team, they didn't.

Instead, rookie quarterback Nick Foles, making his NFL debut in relief of a concussed Michael Vick, fired a second-down slant at DeSean Jackson. It was behind Jackson, not a good pass, and as the Eagle receiver tried to make a circus catch he deflected the ball off ex-Eagle Ernie Sims' knee and right do Cowboy corner Brandon Carr, who raced 47 yards for a score and a 31-17 Dallas lead.

Game. Set. Match.

When a team is hot, Jackson makes a fabulous catch there. When a team is going well, the ball falls harmlessly to the ground and you get another try on third-down. And when a team is staggering, stumbling and stalling like the Eagles are, who have lost five in a row and six of seven, it turns into a pick-six.

"I have to get (Jackson) a better ball," Foles said. "Simple as that. I have to deliver to him. I have to give him the ball right in front, right on so he can catch it and get up field and I have to be more accurate ... that's on me."

In the long run the fact that it was Foles saying that and not Vick may prove more significant for the 3-6 Eagles than another dreary loss in a dreadful season. Foles showed a lot of promise in his debut, throwing for 219 yards and a touchdown.

He showed poise, dodged pressure well (and there was a lot of it given the state of the Eagles' injury-destroyed offensive line), made some correct reads and radiated confidence. If he was skittish or nervous, he didn't show it.

"You get the butterflies, you get that but it's taking deep breaths and you just remind yourself that it's football," said Foles, the Birds' 2012 third-round pick from Arizona. "It's high-level football, it's the NFL but it's football. It's a fast game but I felt comfortable out there."

Foles is a confident and very likable young man but an NFL quarterback he is not yet. He has a very heavy touch on the kind of short passes that are a staple of the Eagles' offense. He gets too much air under his passes, throws the ball into danger too much and doesn't seem as precise and as accurate as he needs to be in this offense.

That's all fixable in time, but time is something Andy Reid and the Eagles do not have. Eagles fans, who gave Foles an ovation as he entered, may not want to hear it but Reid was right afterwards that Vick's the starter when he's healthy.

"For not having practiced at all with the first group I thought (Nick) came in and did some good things," Reid said. "(Vick) is the quarterback, yeah."

And that's the way the Eagles' players want it, too. The fans may want Foles; the locker room, maybe not.

"Even though the season's not going the way we all expected, he's still the leader amongst this team," Eagles cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie said. "He's still the guy that can lead us back to where we need to be. Without him, that's going to be a major loss."

Foles wasn't the reason the Eagles lost. The Eagles lost because they gave up too many big plays -- such as a pair of Tony Romo strikes to wideout Dez Bryant (who used Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie as his personal playtoy), one for 49 yards that set up a field goal and a 30-yard TD strike that tied the game on the last play of the third quarter.

The Eagles lost because their usually-mediocre special teams turned rancid, allowing the killer punt return and missing kicks. The Eagles lost because their patchwork and penalty-prone offensive line came up small when it mattered most. They lost because LeSean McCoy only ran the ball 16 times on a day he averaged a first down every two carries. They lost because bad personnel decisions of the past are catching up with Reid now.

But most of all the Birds lost because they aren't a very good football team -- as that key fourth-quarter moment showed all too clearly.